There is no right way to lose someone. This is a lesson I learned all too well when I was all too young. When it comes down to it, it’s like this: Life is made up of vital moments that make us, break us and determine who we are going to be. And it’s almost always the heavy stuff that really holds the biggest impact.

When I was a sophomore in high school, only two years ago from this past April, I lost one of my childhood best friends to an overdose in the small hours of Easter Sunday morning. And it was in the split second that it took for me to get the news, through Facebook from someone who didn’t even know her (which still almost makes me sick to this day, by the way), that I learned a lot about myself.

I learned that five hours is a long time to cry, I learned that in times of despair nothing is more comforting than the arms of my mother, and I learned that the life and death of someone we love is only as good as we make it after they’ve gone.

2014 was a really vulnerable year for me. I got very acquainted with the feeling of loss, and in turn I also became very unsteady. I was finally old enough and in a difficult enough place in my life to start asking the real questions about death, and it wasn’t long before I became obsessed with seeking out even the unattainable answers.

It’s probably best to point out that I have always been a really heavy person. My mind is a storm of thoughts that have constantly been proven to be a lot for other people to handle. I started therapy for anxiety at the small age of ten years old. That being said, it didn’t come as much of a shock to me, or anyone else, when I took my friend’s death to a much deeper level than a lot of other people­—even her closer companions. I refused to simply get over that she was gone. I became really bitter and very angry with the world; I almost felt betrayed. Heck, I became bitter and angry with my friend herself for dying. Like she could control it. I immersed myself in her loss to the point where I could not function like a normal human being.

Part of this problem was the dreaded “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” mentality that inevitably trails any type of loss; especially that of one so young. There was one thing, though, I think that was really the cherry on top. She and I were not friends at the time of her death. We honestly hadn’t even spoken in years, and there were people who had been closer to her that assumed I was mooching off of her loss to gain sympathy and attention. There was a period of four years where I considered her my best and closest friend, and I didn’t even have her number in my phone when she died. And that is something to live with for the rest of my life. All I carried around of her was the memories of what we had when we were younger.

Out of everything that had happened, I think what her death inspired in me the most was to start living freely with how I felt. There’s no time to leave feelings left unsaid. When you love someone, you have to tell them. Otherwise, they happen to you without ever knowing what they meant in your life. I’ve spent the past two years making amends with not only my friend, but with myself as well. She has found herself the subject of many of my poems and artwork, the center of plenty of my stories, and the drive behind a lot of my successes and choices.

I don’t know what happens to people when they die. I spent more than my fair share of time trying to figure it out, but I simply do not possess the answer. Among that, I also don’t know why bad things happen to good people, or why mothers lose their daughters, or why friends fall out with each other before the tragedy strikes. But I do know that once someone is gone, it’s in the hands of those they love to keep their memory in good taste. It’s in the hands of them to take the lessons they’ve learned from the deceased and apply them to the world and try to make it a better place. Just as I have done, just as so many others have done.

As I’ve said, there is no proper way to grieve. There’s no proper way to lose someone, either. There is, however, a proper way to remember someone. And that’s the most important lesson of all.